Security News > 2021 > May > WhatsApp Sues Indian Government Over New Internet Regulations
WhatsApp on Wednesday fired a legal salvo against the Indian government to block new regulations that would require messaging apps to trace the "First originator" of messages shared on the platform, thus effectively breaking encryption protections.
"Requiring messaging apps to 'trace' chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on WhatsApp, which would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people's right to privacy," a WhatsApp spokesperson told The Hacker News via email.
The lawsuit, filed by the Facebook-owned messaging service in the Delhi High Court, seeks to bar new internet rules that come into force effective May 26.
Adding such a requirement would mean breaking WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption, which secures messages from potential eavesdroppers - including telecom providers, internet service providers, and even WhatsApp itself - from being able to access the cryptographic keys necessary to decode the conversation.
"Traceability is intended to do the opposite by requiring private messaging services like WhatsApp to keep track of who-said-what and who-shared-what for billions of messages sent every day," the company said.
The Indian government, on the other hand, has proposed that WhatsApp assign an alphanumeric hash to every message sent through its platform or tag them with the originator's information to enable traceability without weakening encryption.